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Tuesday, 9 June 2015

Massacre at Sea: Royal Edward and UB-14, 1915

In both World Wars the greatest danger many troops faced,
especially if they were in support or non-frontline roles, may well have been
that of sinking of their transports. It is a tribute to the efficacy of convoy
and escort provisions that in practice only few of the millions of men who were
transported by ocean did experience such nightmares. When the worst did happen however
the chances of escape from below decks on an overcrowded troopship could well
be low and the casualty numbers correspondingly high. The hundredth anniversary
of one such disaster, largely forgotten today, is due in August of this year.

1915 can be fairly regarded as the year in which the submarine
first demonstrated its full potential far from home bases. The sinking by
German U-boats of the Lusitania, the
attacks of naval vessels off the beaches of Gallipoli and the campaign against
Britain’s fishing fleet have all been mentioned in earlier blogs. In the second
half of the year U-boats operating out of Austro-Hungarian bases on the Adriatic
found new hunting grounds the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean. The
Dardanelles expedition was stalled, but manpower-intensive, the Turkish threat
to the Suez Canal remained and Mesopotamia – modern Iraq – sucked in more and
more troops as British advances there met increased opposition. Together, these
demands necessitated major Allied shipping movements, including troop
transportation.

Contemporary postcard: Royal Edward in civilian service, rre-WW1

The Royal Edward
was a large, modern and virtually new liner when, like her identical sister Royal George, she was requisitioned for
service as a British troopship in 1914. Of 11,117 tons and 523 feet long, and
originally named Cairo and Heliopolis, these vessels had been built
for fast mail-service between Marseilles and Alexandria. Steam turbines and three
shafts gave them a top speed of 19 knots and they had accommodation for 1114
passengers, 344 of them in first class. In 1909 both ships were sold on to the “Royal
Line”, a subsidiary company of the Canadian Northern Railway, to establish a
service between Britain and Canada. They were renamed Royal Edward and Royal George.
Under these names they were to become troopships, a role for which their size
and speed made them ideal.

Royal Edward as a troopship, 1914

In July-August 1915 the Royal
George transported troops from Britain who were intended to reinforce the British
29th Division at Gallipoli. A brief stop was made at Alexandria
before heading north-west up into the Aegean towards the main British staging base
at Mudros. Sources vary as to the exact total of men carried but it appears to
have been around 1600, of whom some 200 represented crew. By this stage German –
and to a lesser extent Austro-Hungarian – submarine presence had been making
itself felt in the area. Among these craft was the tiny coastal submarine UB-21.

UB-14 and her crew - tiny but very, very dangerous

Constructed at Bremen in North Germany and a mere 92 feet
long and of only 125 tons surface displacement, the UB-14 was a new vessel. She had been transported overland, in
sections, by rail from Germany before being reassembled at the Austro-Hungarian
base at Pola. Her armament was limited – two 17-inch torpedo tubes and a single
machine gun. She had a crew of fourteen and diesel and electric power on a
single shaft only. Despite her small size and puny armament she was destined to
inflict higher losses on the enemy than many larger and more potent vessels.

UB-14's sister, UB-13, being transported by rail - in sections - from Germany

UB-14's debut was spectacular. Under her first commander, Oberleutnant Heino von Heimburg (1889-1945), she sank the 9800-ton Italian armoured cruiser Amalfi off Venice in July 7th
1915. This was von Heimburg’s second victory, for while previously commanding UB-15 he had sunk the Italian submarine Medusa on June 10th. Following the Amalfi sinking UB-14 received orders to proceed to
Turkey – a passage achieved only with difficulty, and partially under tow by a
Austro-Hungarian destroyer, due to her limited range.

UB-14's first victim - the 9800-ton Italian armoured cruiser Amalfi

On August 13thUB-14 sighted two ships, unescorted, some 60 miles north of Crete.
The first proved to be a hospital ship, the Soudan,
and, marked as such, von Heimburg allowed her to pass safely. The second was the
Royal Edward. It seems that an
evacuation drill had taken place on board her only shortly before and a major
part of the troops carried were now below and re-stowing their kit, a fact that
was to have tragic consequences. At one-mile range UB-14 launched a single torpedo. It struck the troopship close to the
stern and she began to settle quickly. Though the radio-operator had time to
transmit a distress signal the huge ship went down in six minutes. Many of the
troops, trapped below, went down with her but many also found themselves in the
water.

Alerted by the radio message, the Soudan came about and spent the next six hours recovering some 440
men. Two French destroyers and some trawlers also arrived and rescued another
221. Despite this the final death toll was still high – some 935 according to
some accounts. UB-14 had already
departed from the scene and the lack of an escort had almost certainly
contributed to her success.

von Heimburg with Blue Max- 1917

UB-14’s career was
only beginning. Three weeks later, on September 2nd 1915, still in the
Aegean, she torpedoed the 11,900 ton transport Southland, then carrying Australian troops. Though 40 of the 1400
men on board died the remainder got away in lifeboats. The Southland herself was saved from sinking by being beached on a
nearby island. Though repaired, her luck was not to last and she was to be
torpedoed and sunk in 1917 off the north-west coast of Ireland.

In late 1915 the UB-14
made the dangerous passage up the Dardanelles but was forced to put in to port
for repairs. Her next victim was not to be by torpedo, but due to a personal
exploit by Oberleutnant von Heimburg. On September 4th a Royal Navy
submarine, the E7 had also made the passage
but had become entangled in nets below the surface. Turkish craft had dropped
several mines around her, but without result. von Heimburg took matters into
his own hands. He rowed out to the site with the UB-14’s cook and used a plumb
weight to locate the E7. On finding
metal and knowing he was directly over the trapped submarine he dropped a
further charge. Deciding that the game was up, the E7 surfaced and came under fire from Turkish shore batteries. Her
commander ordered “abandon ship” and set scuttling charges, thereby sinking his
vessel. von Heimburg somehow survived this maelstrom and was subsequently – and
deservedly – awarded the Pour le Mérite,
the coveted Blue Max.

HMS E7, similar to E20, also sunk by von Heimburg

UB-14 was to
operate thereafter in the Black Sea, where she was to sink two Allied vessels in
October 1915, and in the Sea of Marmara, where she sank the British submarine E20 in November. von Heimburg was replaced as commander early in 1916 butthe
UB-14’s Black Sea career was to continue to the end of the war. She ended by
being scuttled off Sevastopol in early 1919 following Germany’s surrender.

And von Heimburg’s later career? He was to retire from the German
Navy as an admiral in 1943, following which – one regrets to record – he became
a judge on a Nazi “People’s Court”. He was captured by the Soviets in 1945,
taken to Russia, and died in captivity there. It was an ignominious end, in
both moral and personal terms, for an undoubtedly brave man.

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If you want to read about the Turkish Navy in an earlier war, click on image below

2 comments:

Very interesting post Antoine, and close to home for me. Royal Edward was moored at my home town of Southend at the end of the pier and used to hold interned German nationals, one of whom was the famous anarchist philosopher Rudolf Rocker. She was almost sunk on one occasion when a bomb dropped by the zeppelin LZ 38 landed a few yards away. The LZ 38 bombed Southend on 2 occasions and causing damage in many places, including houses in my street. A month later she became the first aircraft to bomb London and was destroyed in her Belgian hangar a week later by a British bombing raid.

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My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.